Dear editor:
Re: Will City Go To Pot, Hoboken Reporter, April 22. Our state, along with others, is wrestling with the problem of whether or not to “legalize” pot. The solution is simple. All NJ has to do is repeal the stupid laws criminalizing pot, and the free market, which all capitalists claim to worship, will take care of the rest. Think of the billions of dollars wasted and lives harmed by the incarceration of harmless pot smokers!
A hippie friend out West grows weed illegally (he lives on a few acres off the beaten path) and sells it locally. By growing much of his own food, and part-time jobs, and the income from selling pot, he and his wife were able to raise two daughters who have given those grandchildren.
He predicts that, like Prohibition when Americans drank more alcohol because it was illegal, and imbibed normal amounts when it became available again, it’ll be the same when cannabis is freely purchasable.
Now the illegality of it makes it forbidden and attractive to the young.
He says the liquor lobby, who wanted no competition, was behind the “reefer madness” demonization of cannabis for decades. But it is well known that alcohol, not pot, commits violent crimes and highway mayhem. And pot, despite claims by its detractors, doesn’t destroy brain cells, either. This friend, now 78 years old, has smoked pot every day for 50 years, and his mind is as sharp as ever.
There’s no need to agonize about “legalizing” anything. Just stop jailing people for growing and smoking it. Better yet, where there’s good old American free market competition, the prices will drop.
T. Weed
